Kitchen worktops in Kensal Rise

Yes. Similar terraced grid to Queen's Park but with more upper and lower maisonette splits, so a large share of jobs are first-floor kitchens that cannot extend and are limited to a reconfigured 3m L with the sink under the original window. Ground-floor flats with garden access do get the full side-return treatment with an island. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

late Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace and converted maisonette. These are built in dense concrete, so support for a peninsula or an end panel goes in with proper anchors rather than plugs. The carry is the constraint. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Streets slope down towards the railway, parking is permit-controlled, and the split maisonettes mean an external or internal stair carry on roughly half the jobs. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project. Upper maisonettes carry a real weight consideration on old timber joists, so a thick island top is often better replaced with a 20mm slab on a ply substrate.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Sound carcasses are the condition. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.